1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital recording device and a digital recording method for recording a received program broadcast signal as digital information (hereinafter referred to as digital recording). In particular, the present invention relates to digital recording device and method allowing a program to be entitled in parallel with recording of the program.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, a system has been in wider use for converting a television signal into a digital form which is transmitted to and received in each household. Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 9-37168, for example, discloses an electronic-program-guide display control device. As for this device, when a program selection is made while a received program is being displayed, a data stream is simultaneously displayed, based on a received EPG (electronic program guide), that is constituted of respective scale-down images for a plurality of, for example, five programs. A cursor may be moved to designate and select a desired scale-down image. At this time, depending on whether or not the user releases a parental rock, control is done over whether a scale-down image of a program in the adult category is selected or not (not displayed at all). A resultant characteristic here is that, restriction is simply and clearly imposed on viewing of programs, since a scale-down image of the electronic program guide is selected according to identification of the viewer based on the parental rock.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 10-108090 discloses a program guide display device. The program guide display device receives digital television broadcasts from a satellite, extracts, from contents of the received broadcasts, program-related information (e.g. channel, title of the program, starting time, ending time, rating information, charge information) for displaying program contents program by program, and records the extracted information regarding the program in a memory as program data. The rating information includes such information as NR (no restriction), PG (parental guidance), and PG-13 (parental guidance for children under 13).
Titles are displayed in a manner which is changed according to the value of a display flag for the program. If the user sets a limit on the charge at 5 dollars and sets the rating information of PG-13, these setting details are compared with program data for each program. According to the comparison, the display color for the title is changed on a program guide screen. A resultant characteristic is that, the user may only view the program guidance screen to identify, at a glance, viewable programs and non-viewable programs under this setting.
Japanese Patent National Publication No. 2000-501273 (WO98/38797) discloses a device which generates a television program guide using icons. Specifically, when a signal transmitted from a broadcast station is received to generate a program guide based on data of a program list included in the received content, a restriction standard entered by the viewer is compared with the data of the program list to determine whether or not a “lock” icon (relevant program is available but restricted currently) is put on each program and displayed. According to the determination, a “lock” icon is set and displayed. Consequently, the viewer can readily and immediately identify whether or not a program or channel is restricted in watching.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2001-94928 discloses a digital television broadcast recording device. The device captures and records, on a large-capacity hard disk device, such information as images of digital television broadcasts selected by tuning. In this recording, a management table is produced. On the management table, information about a viewer having recorded a program as well as a replay permission flag for permitting other viewers to replay the program are recorded for each program. The replay permission flag can be set externally for each of other viewers and thus the viewer having recorded the program surely inhibits other viewers to replay the recorded program without permission.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,389B1 discloses a system which records information about a received digital television broadcast on a hard disk while separately recording rating information all the time that is received in parallel with the information about the broadcast. In this way, in parallel with recording of the program, rating information can be recorded as well.
As seen from the above-mentioned publications, it has been made possible to record and replay digital television signals by the digital recording device including a large-capacity memory such as hard disk device (hereinafter referred to as HDD) which has remarkably been decreased in cost and increased in capacity. The large storage capacity of the digital recording device allows large-capacity data to be recorded.
Contents refer to a group of data stored on the HDD and the contents are managed title by title. In a conventional manner, one title is allocated to one content with its beginning at the start of recording and its ending at the end thereof. If the content of one title includes data of a plurality of programs, the user has to newly create titles, program by program, and assign the titles to the programs after recording the content, which is troublesome for the user.
None of the publications above teaches digital recording of television broadcasts that is managed by creating titles program by program and allocating the created titles to respective programs.